


The Staggering Scarecrow

by STEPH_INFECTION



Category: Absolver (Video Game)
Genre: Drinking, Gen, OC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 22:01:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16104701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/STEPH_INFECTION/pseuds/STEPH_INFECTION
Summary: A backstory to my Absolver OC Aurora. I Might make some more drabbles and such with her in the future.





	The Staggering Scarecrow

Ever since she was a young girl, Aurora had been fascinated with the Absolver corps, hearing great tales of wonder, sacrifice, and virtue from all who had encountered them, and she strived to be like them, training each day from the moment she knew how to join the prospects and get the mask. On her sixteenth birthday, her mother had gifted Aurora her first mask, a scarecrow-like mask that wrapped around her head. Donning the mask, Aurora left her homestead to travel to Towerpoint to become an Absolver.

 

Years of rigorous training at Towerpoint and many times failing to meet the expectations that come with traveling to Raslan to become an Absolver, on her twentieth birthday, Aurora was chosen to be taken unto the Fold and become a prospect, though her journey to this path had taken a toll. Upon volunteering to become a prospect, she took a vow of silence, and the guides folded her to be unable to use words again, though she was able to sign to those who understood.

 

Having the guide imbue her own mask with essence was the hardest part of the process, but once it was done, there was no going back. The guides once again folded and sent her to the ruins of the once great Raslan, a city that used to be booming with commerce and travel, a city of heresy. The Adalians abused the Essence, and so the great Anlek caused the great Downfall, and showed the people the way to true enlightenment.

 

Though Raslan is a city of fallen heresy, and a reminder to those who wish to abuse the essence, it still held an ornate beauty that Aurora had never experienced before, neither at Towerpoint or her home in the Uring mountains. She didn’t have much time to admire the scene, for as soon as she noticed the beauty of the fallen city, a group of lost prospects had noticed her. She heard the steady patting of their feet as they rushed her, and was able to act accordingly. With a grace unlike any had seen from her before, she swiftly dispatched the three lost souls, and noticed that there were shards of essence floating near her that seemed to move as she did. Soon, she was folding her attacks to be more powerful than any ordinary strike, and causing shadows to dance at her feet as she feigned an attack.

 

Passing through the fields as she trekked to Raslan proper, she began noticing more lost prospects appearing the closer she got to the once booming city. Traveling through a small village on the outskirts of the town, she came across a stone gateway she couldn’t open, runes on the side of the gate depicting someone with power being able to open the stone and travel through. She combed the village through and through, fighting any that came across her path, until a man she had recognised as Silan, one of the prospects who was chosen to travel to Raslan some years prior, made himself apparent. She was taken back for a moment, not understanding how he could have given in to the lure of the essence, but knew what she had to do.

 

After defeating Silan, she returned to the monstrous stone door, and watched as it opened for her to pass. Through it was a narrow passageway, which seemed to be leading toward a structure made of obsidian. As she walked in, the first thing she noticed was an Obelisk, with three glowing red marks, and what seemed to be a door engraved onto it. Beside the obelisk was a Guide, and just before the obelisk was an altar where she could meditate and reconvene herself with the healing properties of the Essence. After speaking with the Guide, he told her that for her to become an absolver she needed to defeat Kuretz in the raslan coliseum, Cargal and Kilnor in the bird watching roost, and after defeating them she would ascend the tower of Adal and confront Risryn.

 

With nothing more than her bare hands, mask and clothes, she fought through the great harbor and pushed to the Raslan coliseum and faced off against Kuretz. Kuretz tried to use some sort of folding to break her spirit, and corrupt her to the essence, but she shook off the hold he was trying to establish on her. Surprised, he told her that she may be a worthy opponent to face him, and then the duel began.

 

Aurora had defeated Kuretz, and took his war gloves as a sort of prize. She was able to summon these gloves at will, granted her essence shards were up to it.

 

Kuretz defeated, she made her way through the oration quarter and the remainder of the coliseum, and began to search for Cargal and Kilnor in the raven’s roost. The brother and sister were two very powerful tearean war chiefs, and were not to be underestimated. Upon arriving at the birdwatching tower, the two greeted her by talking down to one another, bragging about how the other wouldn’t be able to defeat her. Before too long, both of them were proven right as they unfolded beneath her blows.

 

Aurora returned to the Guide at the bridge of guidance, and he told her that she was still not yet ready to face against Risryn. She was to wait for the three enemies to re-fold, coming back like she and so many other prospects have many times, and to fight with them until she felt the call of the tower.

 

Much of her time was spent training with other prospects so she could defeat her foes time and time again as they continued to grow stronger and adapt to her, and her to them. Eventually, her foes soon became friends, partners to spar with, and at times of relaxation to have a meal with. She hadn’t told the guide about her new friendships, as she was certain they would not approve. 

 

One night as she sit with Cargal, Kilnor, and Kuretz in a destroyed house in the city of Raslan, she felt it. She could practically hear the obelisk calling to her from within the tower of Adal, and she quickly stood to face her final foe. Her new friends had trained her for this moment, and had even given her gifts to help prepare her for her coming battle. Cargal had given her shoulder plates, which she admittedly did not wear as the weight of the armor slowed her too greatly, Kilnor gifted her a sword she had a tearian blacksmith create for her, and both of the pair had worked to make a new mask for her, though they didn’t wear the masks themselves, finding them dreadful, they respected her choice of leaving hers on. Kuretz had taught her to use the war gloves not as an addition to her strikes, but to make new ones not previously possible due to the fragility of her flesh and bone. Giving her friends a parting bow, she marched to the tower of Adal, and began to ascend through the essence reserves. 

 

When she entered the tower, she saw hordes of lost prospects, cradling and huddling around the essence, much like an addict to his boon. She fought her way through the masses of broken prospects, and when she reached the tower proper a new Guide greeted her. He expressed his distaste in her choice of companionship, saying that they were heretics and needed to be killed, not just unfolded. When she was done with Risryn, she was to finish them off. She was appalled by the thought, as she hadn’t found anything wrong with any of her compatriots, all their actions had excellent explanations behind them. The others had been trying to tell her of the Guide’s misguided and misinformed ways, but she had refused to accept their truths, though now she too was beginning to question their motives. This didn’t seem right, for as long as you don’t abuse the power of the essence what is to keep others from using it to fold? Surely so long as it wasn’t used in the wrong ways by the wrong people another disaster wouldn’t strike them.

 

She finished her ascent of the tower, and in the courtyard of the imperial quarters, she saw Risryn, combating an Absolver. She made quick work of him, but instead of unfolding him, she removed his mask and threw him off of the tower, sending him to his final resting place. When she saw Aurora, she was surprised to say the least. She was only a prospect, yet she had made it all the way to her perch, and was standing before her, willing to fight though she could tell that truthfully Aurora didn’t know what it was she was fighting for. Risryn told her that the guides were mislead in their beliefs, much like the others had already told her. Aurora had not answered, being unable to, and instead motioned for her to begin fighting her. Risryn sighed, and lunged for her.

 

After defeating Risryn, She was taken back to towerpoint, where the guides gave her the cloak of the Absolvers as well as their tunic. She was ready to protect the people she had cared about, and became a woman of legend as she was always told the Absolvers did. But the guides simply had her return to Raslan, to wait for instruction. She was outraged, she had seen such suffering and misery even before becoming a prospect, and the guides weren’t even going to try and help. When she returned to Raslan, a new face greeted her. A man named Rakkio, who offered her some sort of local brew. She accepted and they talked as they ate and drank. More accurately, Rakkio talked and she gave non verbal affirmations. Soon she found herself inviting her other friends to drink with her and Rakkio, and while at first, it was a way to unwind, it soon became a way to forget the betrayal of the Guides. Risryn had begun to join them as well, and she told Aurora of how the Guides knew full well many prospects would lose themselves to the essence, and in turn become the perfect guards, as no one dared risking trying to steal from the reserves with hordes of lost prospects roaming them. This sent her into a spiral, and soon she was always at the least buzzed to a point where she was staggering, much like Rakkio himself. Her fighting became much more fluid, unpredictable, and wild.

 

That night, she burned her absolver tunic and cloak, and vowed to one day avenge all the fallen prospects who had been lured into this nefarious trap by the Guides. Now, she staggered and wandered Raslan, fighting anyone who attacked her, prospects and absolvers alike, as well as any Guide she came across. Thus is the tale of Aurora, the Staggering Scarecrow.


End file.
